Is anyone else concerned about google growing dominance, especially in advertising? I read in their terms of service that publishers are not allowed to display any other type of contextual ads. Couldn't this be regarded as restrictive trade practices? Also, what percentage of the click cost do they pay to adsense publishers? I only seem to get a small fraction of what I pay in adwords. With little competition, I guess they can get away with it.
what restriction? you have a choice - google or someone else. i'm sure the % is published somewhere. they are publically traded.
Before Yahoo broke off Google was powering around 80% if all searches so they now have more competition than in the past. Shannon
Google has much bigger goals then the search engine... read this - I met the guy who wrote this at pubcon and he was pretty convincing http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117.html
I'm not particularly worried about Google's dominance because I plan on investing in their company and stock. if you can't beat them, why not join them?
I share your worry. One company with so much power to make or break my fortunes on a whim makes me worry.
I believe your fears and worries are unfounded. You shouldn't give Google the power to make or break you. If you are earning a decent income, you should diversify and invest in other areas other than Google. It isn't wise to put all your eggs in one basket.
That's pointless sermonizing, because the fact remains that nearly half of my income is dependent on Google driving traffic to me through their SE. Even though Yahoo and other SE's have been doing a better job lately, Google still accounts for a healthy percentage of my sites, and I'll go so far as to say that it accounts for the MAJORITY of sites out there as well, or else you wouldn't get such a massive load of threads worrying/complaining/fearing on this forum and others everytime Google does something to their algo.
google is not dominating anything, they're just responding to competition, my latest news on yahoo is they bought http://del.icio.us (didn't even know that there exist a site for the purpose of bookmarks alone), if you're google you can't just wait and hope the competition fails.
They aren't... http://www.forbes.com/2006/01/03/google-gmail-0103markets09.html Google already has the dominate search market share, and they were able to grow that market share in 2005 by 5%. And analysts just raised their stock price target to $600 (from $445), based on this: Just in 2005, Google has done all sorts of neat things... Google Base, Google Maps, Gmail, etc. (all products of 2005) Will certainly be interesting to see what they come up with for 2006.
The only thing that I'd be concerned with is Google growing to big and not being able to handle the extra load. As you all have seen there serps are not that great IMO and when they were just a SE/Ad system they had much better results. And I am sure Microsoft has attack plans to beat Google. Step 1 is with Windows Vista (MSN Search is pretty well intergrated even in the CTP's as I beta test MS software) and the recent news on partnering up with a big internet company (I feel it maybe Yahoo)
I am sure Microsoft is going to loose this battle if going by their practices in the past......Windows ME comes to mind - Hotmail and spam Internet Explorer and security flaws need I go on? Google is growing fast but it seems they are handling the load quite well and are proving how smart they actually are with the amount of great services launched in 2005 as posted before. Also they are creating 600 jobs in their European HQ in Dublin in 2006 so it looks like they are preparing for their expansion.
So far, Google has been pretty smart about not slacking in any area (even if they are already dominant), which is more than I can say for other companies (remember Alta Vista? They were #1, they had no need to innovate.. hehe or even more recently Yahoo... Yahoo didn't have much reason to innovate before Google came along). Google on the other hand seems to churn out new/cool stuff all the time rather than sit back. They also seem to leave no stone untouched... I was reading about how they have electrical engineers on-staff to make their server power supplies 90% efficient vs. the previous 80% efficient. This might seem like a little thing, but it's that general mentality they have. And guess what? The money they save in electricity by keeping electrical engineers on staff more than pays for their salary, and I also heard they are now licensing their power supply innovations back to PC manufacturers.
Yes Google I can say has made tons of cool products like Urchin but for free. turfsniffer - About your Windows ME comment I admit there was major design problems with Windows ME. I had it and it made me upgrade to XP the minute it was released but Uncle Bill knows he's in trouble if he does not fix the security/reliablity of Windows and other products and that's what Windows Vista is. It's a fix for all the problems with security. Is it 100% secure? No nothing is, but I can tell you if people are looking at security as a top priority for Windows Vista you will be so happy that MS has taken the time to block the most unsecure parts of Windows. IE7 will nolonger request stuff from the system and comprimise the system security unlike older versions did.
I think Microsofts flagship products Office and Windows will become less and less important over the next 5 years. There seems to be plenty of people willing to try YPN. Google looks set to become this massive internet conglomerate.
And everyone thought when they IPO'ed at $100 it was crazy high. I wish I would have sunk all the money I spent trying to make money using Google to just investing in Google!
I don't care how smart you are, persistence is the ultimate key to success IMO. This just proves that to be true. Staying on top is always harder work than getting there, and Google is doing a great job, no matter whether people like it or not, again IMO.
I wasn't talking about how much traffic Google is sending you. Even if you get the majority of your site's traffic from them, the money you make is yours to do what you please. Take the money, save it, and invest it somewhere else and don't worry about it. Google is too big to stop anyway. Hell, I would be buying their stock if I were making enough. There are so many other areas for small business people to put their money these days that worrying too much about Google is meaningless.